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This photograph is from:
http://www.zoominfo.com/#!search/profile/person?personId=1268034404&targetid=profile
The anonymous blogger writes about work being done at MIT by Professor Pedro Reis and his colleagues:
“Science has finally come up with an explanation for what comes naturally to most home cooks: Eggs crack best around their equators, says MIT mechanical engineer Pedro Reis, because of their geometry. He and a young colleague, Arnaud Lazarus, have just published a paper in Physical Review Letters demonstrating a link between an eggshell's geometry (it belongs to a class of shapes known as ovoids) and a mechanical property called rigidity - the quality that, along with strength, determines how much force an object can withstand before it cracks. Scientifically, strength and rigidity are distinct, though related, concepts: The shape of an eggshell can determine its rigidity without affecting its strength. Reis explains the distinction by pointing out the difference between two eggshells, one of which is unbroken, and the other of which has tiny cracks in the shell.
“Reis became interested in studying eggshells after successfully walking on a few cartons of eggs without breaking them, a popular party trick among the geekerati. "I didn't believe it until the first time I did it, but you can actually stand on a carton of eggs," he said.
"We can't tell you precisely when the egg is going to break," says Reis, "but we can tell you why it makes sense to break it along that direction."
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